Yeah, isn't Venom part of the Marvel-verse? How the hell did they get the license to it and not it be part of the MCU?

Venom is one of the Spider-man related characters Sony has the film rights to. So they can make a movie out of it without cooperating with the MCU. Like the Spider-Man/Amazing Spider-Man movies and X-men/FF in Fox's case.

There was a lot of legal headache getting Spider-man into the mcu with Civil War.

Looks like they're going a bio-weapon origin divorced with spider-man to hit the anti-hero vibe. I much prefer Venom as a spidey villian myself but then I've only had a very limited exposure to the ant-hero version of venom.

To the brave passengers and crew of the Kobayashi Maru... sucks to be you - Peter David